Why Won’t My #@*&^ Customer Make Up His Mind? Common Causes and Fixes to "No-Decisions" No-decisions are to be expected, but too many can signify a larger problem. If you’re tracking more than normal, then you should try to uncover the cause and take corrective action. Your client’s decision not to change the status quo is now a significant "competitor" in many selling situations. According to a 2013 CSO Insights study of companies’ win/loss ratios, 26.1% of all deals were ending in a no-decision. As recently as 2002, the rate was only 17%. A few years ago, those numbers wouldn’t surprise many people given the effects of the economic turmoil. Surely more projects were abandoned, postponed, or brought in-house in the face of shrinking budgets and headcount. But most businesses and budgets have rebounded to the point where one out of four deals ending in a no-decision is excessive. Which Is Worse, a Loss or a No-decision? Losing a sale to a competitor is probably worse because it indicates that you were beaten on price, scope, reputation, quality, personnel, implementation, delivery time, or some other variable. And it means that the revenue and business that could have been yours is now going to your competitor. But no-decisions aren’t anything to cheer about. You’re investing time and resources without a return. Yes, something may pan out down the road, but that’s in another sales cycle — you need to eat today. Root Causes: What’s Going On? With the "do-nothing" or "no-decision" choice prevalent in more than a quarter of the deals studied, it is vital for salespeople to understand why a client is considering making a purchase and the business logic behind that decision to buy at this time. Either before or while engaging in a dialogue to position your insight to a client, ensure that you gather as much information about the client’s situation as possible. Assess the current situation and the pressure the issue is creating. Consider the potential impacts the issue is creating now and perhaps the worsening impacts over time. All of this can be used to reinforce the impact of making no decision. Whenever possible, try to quantify or monetize the impact. Some common causes for no-decisions are: Just browsing — The client wasn’t really intent on buying now or in the immediate future. Lack of budget — They might be serious about buying but didn’t appreciate how much of an investment it would cost. Insufficient internal buy-in — Your client wanted to move forward but perhaps lacked approval from higher up or support from colleagues in other departments. Not ready — Perhaps the client realized that they need to sort out where they are internally before proceeding. Never intended to buy — This circumstance is perhaps the worst because, let’s face it, you’ve been used. The client wanted to get smart by having you and some of your competitors present your suggestions, capabilities, and ideas to them, thus validating that, "Yeah, we can do this in-house and save some money." At a bare minimum, make sure that you can answer the following questions: What is the compelling reason or business case to change (from the client’s point of view)? Which decision makers or influencers are the driving force behind the change? Which decision makers or influencers are hesitant or resistant to the change? What are the possible outcomes and gains from making the change? What are the possible impacts and consequences of not changing? Addressing a No-decision If the client responds to your insight by not taking action, try to understand the underlying reason why the client is stalling and explore the reason for the no-decision. Has something changed? Is there something else that has taken on a temporary level of urgency? Use "CCBANT" (Compelling Event, Competition, Budget, Authority, Need, Trust) to explore any changes from the original state and any changes that might explain the stall. Is the issue something you can address? Attempt to reintroduce the insight, especially focusing on the implications of taking no action. Find the connections between the insight, taking action, and avoiding a potential negative impact. Use the insight as a motivator to show the consequences of doing nothing. You don’t want to nag or appear desperate, but these steps and efforts might get the sale back on track. Preventing Future No-decisions If you find that your sales team is suffering too many no-decisions, you need to determine the cause and stem the tide. Better prospecting — Take measures to more accurately ascertain the client’s level of interest and intent to purchase before you throw too many resources at the sales pitch. Responsibility for this should be assumed by both marketing (before handing off leads) and sales. Help your buyer influence internally — If you’re trying to sell a web project to marketing, you would expect them to involve colleagues in IT, sales, accounting, and perhaps other groups who have a stake in the project. As you go through the sales process and no one beyond marketing appears on the radar, that’s a red flag that your contact lacks internal influence or that they’re not a serious buyer. Train your sales reps — Are your sales reps having trouble closing deals? Consider whether a training offering to develop or improve skills and techniques could benefit your sales reps and avoid no-decisions. Evaluate your offerings — This is a long shot, but maybe the problem is what you’re selling. Especially if you are in a position to have no direct competition against which to compare, you may be offering too little ("We can do this ourselves.") or too much ("That’s too complicated. We don’t need all of that — we’ll stick with what we have."). Keep tabs on those undecided clients — As with most things, communication is key. If you don’t ask the client why the project stalled, you’ll be left with assumptions. Especially for those mystery situations when a sale stalled, follow up after a few months to see if anything has changed. You might learn that they’re finally ready or that they’ve undertaken the project themselves, but it will give you some insight into what happened and will keep you positioned for future work. COMPLIMENTARY RESEARCH REPORT Organizations invest substantially in sales training and development. This complimentary report from Training Industry and Richardson summarizes data and provides recommended strategies for maximizing the impact of sales training over time. Click here or on the image below to download this report. The post Why Won’t My #@*&^ Customer Make Up His Mind? Common Causes and Fixes to "No-Decisions" appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

The Sales Learning Curve: Getting Sales Process, Skills and Tools Right before a Full-scale Product Launch Over the past 18 months we’ve launched three significant new offerings: Richardson’s Selling with Insights®, Richardson QuickCheck®, Richardson Sales Process Pro®. It is interesting looking back at how we prepared our sales team, especially in light of a very thoughtful and highly relevant article I picked-up from the Harvard Business Review.[1] The article was written by Mark Leslie, the managing director of Leslie Ventures, and Charles A. Holloway, an emeritus professor of management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business in California. The article discusses the need for what might be called tempered, carefully considered and carefully planned enthusiasm for selling new products. You run a company, let’s say, and your engineering department has developed an impressive new product. You feel deeply that the product is really good - a conclusion borne out by technical research and testing — and will make a real impact on the market. Your strong temptation is to get out and make a full scale effort to sell the product. Don’t. In their very first paragraph, Leslie and Holloway set out the problems a company will face if it plunges in too quickly into a full scale sales effort. "When a company launches a new product, the temptation is to immediately ramp up sales force capacity to acquire customers as quickly as possible. Yet in our 25 years of experience with start-ups and new-product introductions, we’ve found that hiring a full sales force too fast just leads the company to burn through cash and fail to meet revenue expectations. Before it can sell the product efficiently, the entire organization needs to learn how customers will acquire and use it, a process we call the sales learning curve." The "learning curve" itself is a simple concept to understand. A person’s ability to do a task, a simple task or a complicated task, gets better and better the more practice they get - to a point. Learning starts slowly, and then speeds up, than slows down again after time spent doing the task. Basic ability should not decrease, just the rate of improvement of ability. An illustration of the process forms a bell shaped curve, hence the title "learning curve." With the launch of a new product, service or solution, your organization will need to climb a sales learning curve. That is, you will need to learn how to sell the product - ideally with a group of sales people who enjoy the novelty of a new product and who can work with the uncertainty of selling a product they haven’t sold before. As your company learns to sell the new product, you will refine your sales process, your sales messaging and your sales tools. Then, only after you learned to sell and support the sale of the product, should you roll out the product to your entire sales team. This seems counter intuitive to the natural sales instinct of selling as quickly and as much as possible. Remember, however, that though the process may be slower at the start, sales should speed up in the long term as you learn, in the field, how to most effectively sell and support the product. How do you find out how to sell your product "in the field"? You start with giving your sales people a good understanding of what the product can do. They should be able to use the product - but you are not training IT people. You increase the amount of contact with potential clients for the new product, even to the point of more client meetings in the initial phases of sales - or even earlier. Ask for their input. "You bought product x from us and like it. What do you think we should put in product X 2.0, or product Y?" Try to find a way of asking what would get them to replace the earlier product without making it seem like high pressure tactics. For those who buy the new product, check back and ask them how it is being used. The sales learning curve is learning how the product is actually used, what it can really do, and adjusting sales techniques accordingly. Gathering facts as well as sales, in the sales learning curve, gives will also technical feedback. Let your engineering people know about any problems and get to work correcting any problems. They gave you a good new product. They can help you make it a great, and a popular, new product that fits market needs. Selling a new product has to live with the reality of the learning curve. You start slowly, to see how your product fits in the business world. You research client needs, as a part of effective sales. You also monitor how your product meets these needs. (You keep monitoring, even when your sales forces ramps up towards a full scale effort.) With the new facts your "pioneer" and follow-on sales staff gather, you adapt and alter your sales approach to meet client needs better, to meet the needs of more clients, and to increase your sales revenues.   [1] July-August 2006 The post The Sales Learning Curve: Getting Sales Process, Skills and Tools Right before a Full-scale Product Launch appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Sales Reps Need to Earn Their Clients’ Trust — And Keep It Trust is tough to build and easy to lose. Buyers in the process of making a purchasing decision consider many factors, but none might be more important than trust. When hiring or renewing a contract with a product or service provider, a lack of trust can undermine any other variable and isn’t likely something that can be haggled over, such as price or delivery dates. This is especially true of large, long-cycle, complex sales typically found in sectors, such as financial and professional services, IT, HR, and accounting. Consider the fears weighed by your buyers: Does the seller understand my business? Does the seller have my best interests in mind and those of my company? If I give them my business, can I trust them to deliver what they’ve promised? -       On time? On budget? Without complications? The seller also works for some of my competitors. Can I truly trust them to honor confidentiality agreements and maintain an internal "Chinese Wall" of privacy? I’ve built a rapport with the sales rep. Once I agree to the sale, can I trust the team to do the work? Will the sales rep disappear for good? They trimmed their ranks not too long ago; do they still have the best people to take care of my account? Do I have my sales rep’s full attention, or is he looking past me to his next deal? Do I trust this sales rep/provider more than the others we’ve considered? Skeptical in Financial Services Each industry has its own set of trust factors, but there are poignant issues found in financial services. One of the lingering effects of what has been called "The Great Recession" is that many clients remain suspicious of financial institutions. The source of this distrust depends on the part of financial services in which you reside: Clients may have been subjected to tighter credit constraints; decisions that seemed to favor the bank’s interests ahead of theirs; exposure to illiquid, non-performing, or opaque assets; more stringent compliance requirements; or they may simply worry that you are the next Madoff or rogue trader. It is as true in your team’s professional relationships as it is in their personal ones that trust is tough to build and easy to lose. Other recent developments in financial services buyer behavior make it harder for you to build trust: decisions are being made by larger groups, buyers require more transparency into your organization, access to gatekeepers is blocked or limited (including procurement officers), and there is greater intent to shift risk from their organization to yours. Gaining (or Regaining) Client Trust Several years after the financial crisis, we find that clients remain skeptical and that client-facing professionals often avoid difficult conversations about that time or current conditions. After all, why open a can of worms? Well, if the can of worms still exists, acknowledging it conveys that your organization is attuned to and cares about what is happening on the client’s side of the table. Even today, you may have noticed that many of your client-facing professionals and partners favor talking over questioning and listening. By driving a shift in this focus, many sales leaders are prompting their teams to discover (or rediscover) that information is power, enabling them to more effectively frame responses to concerns, as well as offer solutions, ideas, and alternatives. This puts your team in a position in which they are actively engaged in building (or rebuilding) client or partner trust. Focusing on and strengthening your sales team’s questioning and listening skills also improves the impact and efficiency of your business, allowing your team to: Understand and better navigate more complex decision-making groups within client, prospect, and partner organizations; Identify gaps that need to be filled in the client’s understanding of your organization or your team’s solution; and Identify gaps that need to be filled in their understanding of the client, prospect, or partner needs. All of that listening will help you to know how you can best add value to the buyer, their organization, and your relationship. Concentrate on selling and delivering value to your clients and you’ll earn their trust. Keep your promises, and stay in close regular contact before, during, and following the sale. Nurture the relationship, and beware anything that could undermine the trust you’re striving to build. Mistakes are bound to happen at some point — if you’ve built a strong relationship, you may be able to overcome your error based on its severity and the trust you’ve earned. Download our newest E-book,  A Financial Services Leader Guide for Sales Success.      The post Sales Reps Need to Earn Their Clients’ Trust — And Keep It appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

      On behalf of the Richardson team, we wish you and your family a very happy and safe holiday season.     The post Happy Holidays From Richardson appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Why Consultative Selling Fosters Trust In my last blog post, I focused on why Consultative Selling is still relevant. Today, I am going to look at why using  a consultative selling approach can foster trust. A Consultative Selling approach comes to life in the dialogue between the seller and the client with use of the Six Critical Skills: Presence, Relating, Questioning, Listening, Positioning, and Checking. These skills give sellers the ability to navigate the dialogue in the moment by connecting with clients and gaining and keeping their openness and willingness to engage in productive dialogue. Being consultative helps sellers accomplish two important things: They gain needed information to deeply understand client needs, identify the right solution, and tailor what they say about products to ensure relevance and impact, and By maintaining their focus on and connection with the client, they create a positive buying experience for the client that fosters an ongoing relationship and trust. By using the Six Critical Skills in a consultative dialogue, sellers can make sure the client feels heard, respected, understood, helped, and genuinely cared for. Just as important is what the client does not experience: a true consultative approach means the client never feels manipulated. Thus, trust has a place to sow its seeds and grow. So, the outcome of a truly consultative approach is a closer relationship and trust. Consultative selling remains relevant and necessary in today’s selling environment precisely because it provides a foundation for building client trust. Sellers need to bring new ideas and insights to help clients better understand their business issues and identify the best solution to meet their business goals. But, just bringing ideas does not mean clients are receptive to those ideas or willing to invest in them. Trust is a necessary ingredient to the client being truly receptive the seller’s ideas and opposing viewpoints. If trust does not take root early on, the seller’s best ideas will remain suspect, and clients will look to other providers whose ideas they trust. Learn More About Richardson’s Consultative Selling Solutions Click the image below or the following link to download a brochure on our award winning Consultative Selling sales training solutions! Or you can contact Jim Brodo, SVP of marketing directly at Jim.brodo@richardson.com The post Why Consultative Selling Fosters Trust appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Becoming a Trusted Advisor Can Earn You a Seat at the Table "The hardest thing about B2B selling today is that customers don’t need you the way they used to." That is the first sentence of "The End of Solution Sales," an article about the changing environment in business-to-business (B2B) sales that appeared in the July 2012 issue of Harvard Business Review. At the heart of the matter lies the fact that buyer behavior has been radically altered by the Web, even in just the last few years. We have all seen the now magical statistic many times that buyers are 60% of the way through the buying process before they consult with a salesperson. Moreover, the buying process itself now typically has more decision makers, often involving a committee that must reach consensus, instead of a single contact. This adds delays to the selling process, resulting in slower pipeline velocity, more stalled deals, and even the dreaded "no decision" status. Only those who are transactional sellers in a transactional business or those who become trusted advisors have the ear of the right buyers and can move deals through the pipeline effectively. The problem is, "trusted advisor" status can’t be claimed. It has to be earned — and the only opinion that matters is the buyer’s. So, what can sales reps do to differentiate themselves and elevate their status with buyers to become trusted advisors? Here are five tips that I’ve found to be most effective in earning your seat at the table where decisions are made: You have to be proactive — not just reactive to RFPs — and bring buyers new insights and good ideas. You have to shape opportunities rather than wait for specs to be handed down. You have to look out for the best interests of buyers, building a reputation for knowledgeable and workable solutions that add value. You have to be more consultative than transactional. (This helps even in a transactional environment.) You have to balance the pendulum swing in the sales process, knowing when to ask questions and when to provide insights. I recently met with a buyer who told me, "You seem to really understand what I’m trying to accomplish. I’m taking a risk in doing training because we’re not really buying training, we’re trying to buy results. We want to move our business forward, and I see that you get that." What I also get are questions — lots and lots of questions. Buyers tend to bounce ideas off of me. They ask for my views on industry matters. They ask me about my competitors. They’ll also ask whether their competitors are experiencing similar issues and how I’m solving their problems. They see me as a credible resource, a kind of clearinghouse, for best-practice information. When buyers turn to you with questions, seeking your advice and counsel, it’s confirmation of your status as a trusted advisor. And when that happens, you should soon find yourself at the table, as part of the buying process, shaping opportunities rather than reacting to them alongside a crowd of competitors. LEARN MORE ABOUT RICHARDSON’S TRUSTED ADVISOR TRAINING SOLUTIONS If you would like to learn more about Richardson’s customized Trusted Advisor sales training programs, please click here or contact us directly at info@richardson.com The post Becoming a Trusted Advisor Can Earn You a Seat at the Table appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Benchmarks to Becoming a Trusted Advisor In our  last blog post we  discussed, as a trusted advisor,  how to earn your seat at the table as part of the buying process so that you are able to help shape opportunities rather than just react to them. Today we are going to review the road to becoming a trusted advisor to buyers and the several relationship benchmarks that sales professionals need to keep in mind on their journey. Few things are more important than preparation when meeting with a buyer. How well you prepare can immediately differentiate you from the competition. The focus of your efforts should cover three important areas: Strategic impact: What business goals and objectives is the buyer supporting with this purchase? Buyer needs: What’s important to the buyer on both a business and personal level? Technical preparation: Do you have a thorough knowledge of the product or service you’re selling? Being prepared in the right ways, focusing on these three areas, can go a long way toward securing that elusive second meeting with buyers, especially on the executive level. If you don’t ask the right questions, if you can’t provide executives something they don’t already know, why should they buy from you? Another important consideration in your preparations is to focus on leading, not lagging, indicators of success. Doing so adds relevancy to the conversation. At Richardson, we talk about different value lenses, with different facets to view how we present these leading indicators, and ourselves, to buyers: Financial: How are we helping buyers meet their financial goals? Technology: Are we helping them to steer clear of the noise and hype that surrounds technology solutions to focus on what really matters? Strategy: Does our solution fit within the overarching goals of the buyer? Partnership: Are we making a solid case for the value of working with Richardson? In our Trusted Advisor Sales Training Program, we overlay the preparation model on these value lenses. This gives sales professionals a practical framework and the tools to think in depth about the behaviors needed to become a trusted advisor. And you get a better idea of how to address leading indicators, because these will be the measure of success, and how likely you are to close a deal instead of having it stall in the pipeline. By recognizing some of the benchmarks of becoming a trusted advisor, you can begin to have higher-level conversations with buyers about their current and long-term objectives, challenges, strategies, and opportunities. Then you can position your value while demonstrating insight and technical substance. And, in the process, become that go-to professional all your results driven buyers will want to have sitting alongside them at the table. ————————————————————- LEARN MORE ABOUT RICHARDSON’S TRUSTED ADVISOR SALES TRAINING SOLUTIONS If you would like to learn more about Richardson’s customized Trusted Advisor sales training programs, please click here or contact us directly at info@richardson.com   The post Benchmarks to Becoming a Trusted Advisor appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

5 Sales Forecasting Techniques to Improve The key to improving the accuracy in sales forecasting rests with knowing what you need to measure to find out what you want to know. With today’s technology and the near ubiquity of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, it’s more important than ever to give forethought into how you construct your sales forecasts. Otherwise, the data that you get from your time and technology investment may not be what you need to make the right decisions or achieve a real difference in results. Here are five things that matter most in sales forecasting: Don’t bother with CRM if you don’t have a sales process. Without an effective sales process in place, how can you trust your CRM technology to provide relevant insights into where deals are stalled or progressing in your pipeline? How can you begin to measure verifiable outcomes and assess the performance (or coaching needs) of your sales force? How will you recognize leading indicators of customer engagement and gain greater confidence in forecasts? There’s an old saying: If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there. Without a sales process, the metrics you pull from your CRM will often be just numbers. Forecast with metrics that matter. Many sales forecasts are built on probability analysis using weighted metrics. The scenario might go something like this: My historical win rate for opportunities in Stage Two of my pipeline is 50%, so by doing the math, I can forecast revenues of $X in the current quarter. But, win rates are only one layer of the answer. You need to ask more questions and fine-tune your metrics to get a better probability breakdown. How accurate are your sales reps at quantifying their sales opportunities? How well can they predict the timing of revenue once the deal is won? If you only look at win rates, you only get a myopic perspective. Dig deeper. A probability-based sales forecast assigns values to different verifiable outcomes within the sales pipeline. Let’s say those values are 25% for an opportunity in the "analyze and develop" stage, 25% for "position and follow up," and "50%" for "negotiate and close." The problem is that these analytical slices can give you a more conservative view of your forecast than necessary. That’s because you typically don’t win a percentage of a deal: it’s either win or lose. If you just use a probability approach, you will only consider part of the deal’s value in the overall calculation. What I do at Richardson is use different weighted-metric probability analyses as my pressure test for the overall forecast and to give the executive team better support for a scenario range. Then, I take a secondary look using a model that is based on risk and scenarios, focusing on a roll-up that is based on the likelihood that my sales reps and managers provide on the deals they have in the pipeline. Know your sales reps. One thing that gives me more confidence when using a risk-based approach in forecasting is knowing my sales reps. I also know that having a 90% win rate doesn’t mean someone is a super sales rep; rather, that sales rep might only be entering deals into the pipeline that he/she knows can be won. Conversely, someone who puts everything into the pipeline might have a low win rate, even though that sales rep performs well. I can look at the Richardson pipeline and know immediately how reliable I think it’s going to be based on which sales rep entered the deal, when it was entered, and where it came from. This kind of sixth sense comes from my knowing and working well with the entire Richardson team, including regional vice presidents, managers, and sales reps. I can do this because we are a small organization. In larger organizations, you have to rely on your sales managers and sales executives for this thin-slicing. In addition, tools like those offered by Marseli and others allow companies to automatically score opportunities based on criteria, such as how often a close date moves, to get a quick-strike thin-slice that is more data driven. Recognize the art and science of sales forecasting. There is no one right way to leverage your CRM for sales forecasting. You have to take into account various metrics and to trust those in the sales organization who can thin-slice the data. You need to understand the analytics and to develop an intuitive sense about what is credible and what needs further proof. Most of all, you should accept that forecasting is both an art and a science. Learn more about Richardson Sales Coaching Training Solutions! The post Sales Forecasting Techniques - The 5 Things That Matter Most! appeared first on Richardson Sales Enablement Blog.

How do you get the most out of your CRM for Sales Forecasting? If you were an early adopter of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) technology, you probably found it to be an expensive, complex tool that often fell short of delivering on expectations. Today, CRM is easier to use, more cost effective, and a must-have for managing nearly every aspect of business data. Now that you either have or are probably considering a CRM system, how do you get the most out of it? Here are five tips for leveraging your CRM for sales forecasting to gain greater confidence in sales forecast accuracy: 1) Understand the primary purpose of your CRM. There are many, many applications that you can layer on today’s CRM systems, but the key is restraint. To get the most out of your CRM, you need to embrace its primary purpose as a customer relationship management platform. So, use it in that regard to manage your relationships and sales opportunities. Don’t get stuck in the trap of trying to make your CRM do everything it possibly can, or it will become too complex for the everyday use intended. 2) Don’t use your CRM to fix operational inefficiencies. Yes, there are cool systems and platforms that can bring rich functionality into your CRM. You can layer in project management and integrate it with your financial systems. These add-ins can provide a lot of additional data, and it’s tempting to use the CRM to try and fix operational inefficiencies. But, while a CRM can do many things, it first must be a customer relationship management platform. Your priority when configuring the technology should be to make it more useful for your sales team and managing those relationships and to not make it more complicated and cumbersome. The key is to think about marketing, sales, and customer service first. Once you have those nailed down, you can layer in additional uses more effectively. It’s when you lose sight of priorities that the CRM can become a jumbled, nonstrategic barrier to productivity. 3) Align your CRM with your sales process. You need to be thoughtful about how your CRM is initially set up. The first step should be to develop your organization’s sales process. Then, make sure your CRM can mirror and align with that sales process. At every step in development, you should be thinking from this perspective: How does this help me better understand and serve my customer? How does this benefit my sales team, and how does it get my sales rep, my sales manager, and the executive leadership the information they need to effectively manage this business, close deals, and gain insight into forecasting and predicting performance? 4) Add the right functionality. When considering what functionality to add to your CRM, approach it from a sales perspective. What does a sales rep need to do in order to manage deals effectively? What makes it easier for sales reps to gain access to the information they need about their clients and their deals? One key element to consider is a content management platform so that sales reps have easier access to marketing materials and other internally developed content that help them promote and sell. LinkedIn and other social media platforms can be integrated into your CRM so that sales reps can more easily connect with prospects, get leads, and gain insights into their contacts and industry issues. And, with e-mail and other communication systems integrated in the CRM, sales reps can approach prospects and contacts directly and avoid duplication of effort in taking notes and updating records. Accessibility on mobile applications and devices is a given in today’s on-the-go environment. Just make sure that your CRM mobile apps are thoughtfully developed and designed for ease of use. 5) Maintain good relationships across departments. Being in Sales Operations, I make sure to maintain good relationships across the company and stay informed about what’s happening in other departments. As people make decisions in their areas of the business, I need to be able to determine whether it makes sense to integrate their initiative into the CRM to both make their information more accessible to the sales team and better serve customers. Any time you create something that is supposed to provide more information or value to the sales team, make sure that the team can take advantage of it easily and without adding yet another place to go to access the data. Just remember, the CRM is first and foremost a sales tool. While it can also be useful in sharing knowledge and information across an organization, the key is to find a balance that works for your sales reps and your leadership team. Ease of use and sales support: those are my priorities with CRM technology. Learn more about Richardson’s Consultative Selling Sales Training Solutions. The post 5 Tips to Leverage Your CRM for Sales Forecasting appeared first on Richardson Sales Enablement Blog.

Sales Prospecting Is a Marathon, Not a Sprint! It’s OK to want immediate results from sales prospecting. In an ideal world, every call would lead to an appointment and the start of a beautiful business relationship. A more realistic view, however, is one that recognizes sales prospecting as the long-term activity it most often becomes. Too many people gauge sales prospecting success by the number of appointments scheduled. Yet, if your two-minute call only focused on getting in the door and your conversation didn’t cover any meaningful ground, you won’t be well prepared for any appointment that might result. So, your first meeting could easily be your last with that prospect. I judge sales prospecting success by engagement, the kind of dialogue conducted, and whether I was able to gain a greater understanding of the prospect’s needs. Success is being able to take the next step in forming a relationship or, better yet, a partnership. An appointment may not come out of the first or second or third conversation. But, when I do finally get in the door, it will be because I have engaged the prospect in learning more about how I can solve the needs or problems at hand. When you bring value to conversations and put the prospect first, it becomes easier to schedule follow-up calls. And your calls tend to get answered. At least, that’s been my experience with a high percentage of prospects whenever I take a long-term view. With repeated contact, I am able to identify the challenges that the prospect is facing, along with the current landscape and the scope of the prospect’s situation. By the fourth or fifth phone call, I have a good understanding of what’s going on with that person, and I can solidly position my message as a meaningful solution. For some sales professionals, picking up the phone to make prospecting calls is their least favorite activity. They do everything they can to avoid time on the phone because they don’t enjoy the rejection and hang ups. But, there are ways to improve your odds of getting through on the phone. In my previous blog post, I discussed the Do’s and Don’ts of Sales Prospecting, the following are several approaches to sales prospecting that work for me: Consistency and discipline. If you’re making prospecting calls week in and week out, dedicating a half-day each week, you might be able to reach out to a particular prospect eight times within 60 days. If you only get around to making prospecting calls twice a month, you’ll only touch that prospect four times. By making a consistent, weekly effort, your persistence should work in your favor. Watch the clock. If you’re trying to engage a senior leader, you might try calling at 7:30 in the morning or 5:30 at night. These slightly off-hour calls are more likely to be picked up by your target, rather than an assistant acting as gatekeeper. Build rapport with gatekeepers. It is the job of executive assistants to vet incoming phone calls. The person in this role is often seen as a barrier to entry, but if you can get them on your side, your calls have a greater chance of being put through. Sometimes, assistants can be your best resource, and if you show value by sharing some of the conversation you want to have with the executive, the task shifts from whether to let your call through to when would be the best time. The time spent sales prospecting should never be considered a waste. If you don’t get an appointment, you can always try again with that person — or learn enough to know that it’s best to move on. And, if you do get an appointment and you’ve made sure that first call began to engage the prospect, you’ll be better positioned when you do finally sit together, face-to-face.   Click the following to learn more about Richardson’s Consultative Selling Sales Training Solutions. The post Sales Prospecting Takes a Long-term View appeared first on Richardson Sales Enablement Blog.